Investigation of Monotonic and Cyclic Behavior of Tripod Suction Bucket Foundations for Offshore Wind Towers Using Centrifuge Modeling
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 5
Abstract
This paper performed centrifuge load tests of a tripod bucket foundation preliminarily designed as a supporting system of wind turbines and compared the results to those obtained from a test of a monopod bucket foundation. The tripod foundation prototype studied in this study has three bucket caissons, each of which is 6.5 m in diameter and 8.0 m in length. The center-to-center distance between the buckets was 26.9 m. The site is composed of an 11-m thick layer of dense silty sand overlying a thick sandy silt layer. The horizontal load was applied at a height of 33 m from the seabed floor according to the design load condition, and the vertical load was simulated by the self-weight of the model. The moment-rotation angle curves for the tripod foundations were compared with that of the monopod bucket foundation. The moment-rotation curve of the tripod was nearly bilinear, whereas that of the monopod showed a gradual decrease in slope. The yield moment for the tripod foundation was half that of the monopod, but the rotation angle for the yield moment was only 20% that of the monopod. The behavior of the tripod foundation under a cyclic load with respect to the accumulated plastic deformation has also been examined in this study. When the resultant moment of cyclic loading was smaller than the monotonic yield moment, negligible accumulated plastic deformation was observed for both one-way and two-way loading. However, when the resultant moment was higher than the monotonic yield moment, significant cumulated deformation resulted.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by a grant from the Offshore Wind-Energy Foundation System (OWFS) research and design (R&D) program (10CTIPE04) of the Korea Institute of Construction and Transportation Technology Evaluation and Planning funded by the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs and Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Co., Ltd. The authors also acknowledge laboratory support personnel at the Korea Construction Engineering Development Collaboratory Program (KOCED) Geotechnical Centrifuge Center at KAIST.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140 • Issue 5 • May 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 31, 2012
Accepted: Dec 16, 2013
Published online: Jan 27, 2014
Published in print: May 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Jun 27, 2014
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